Downtown Brooklyn isn’t the only new residential neighborhood in the city built virtually from scratch. As a result of rezoning and the subsequent deluge of high-rises, areas of Long Island City, Lower Manhattan, the Upper West Side, and Williamsburg are currently experiencing (or have experienced) similar transformations.

One key difference between what is happening in those neighborhoods and what is happening in Downtown Brooklyn is that no new schools are in the works for DoBro even though it is the area likely to see the largest resulting influx of new residents.

The Queens West Development Corporation was formed to plan and oversee the redevelopment of the Long Island City waterfront. Over 2,600 units of housing and a public school (P.S. 78 pre-k through grade 5), have already been built. Stage 2, currently under construction, will include 3,200 units of housing and a new public school (pre-K through Grade 8). Adjacent to this development is the Hunter’s Point South development where 5,000 housing units (60 percent of which will be affordable to middle income families) are expected to be developed on the site along with an intermediate/high school.

The two new schools — P.S. 312, a 542-seat K-8 school, and I.S./H.S. 404, an intermediate and high school with 1,072 seats — are set to open in September 2013, joining the only school in the neighborhood, P.S. 78 which was started as part of phase 1. Despite more than 1,500 new seats, many parents say they are worried it will not be enough to accommodate the booming population. Mind you, these schools will be completed before all of the building in the neighborhood is finished.

RIVERSIDE SOUTH: 4,000 apartments, 2500 more to come (13,600+ total residents***) = 1 new school

In 1992, the city approved plans to develop the 77-acre Riverside South, a large parcel of land over empty railyards between 59th and 72nd between the West Side Highway and Riverside Boulevard. The Riverside Sourth Planning Corporation was formed and Donald Trump, the original developer, began construction of the first residential towers on the northern portion of the site with a planned 16 residential buildings holding 5,700 apartments. He later lost control of the project and the remaining buildings in Riverside South were built by other developers. The final big development was recently approved by the city, dubbed Riverside Center. It will bring 2500 units of housing and a 500 seat 100,000-square-foot K-8 school to open in 2015. Schools on the Upper West Side have become overcrowded as a result of this large development and the new school will likely only end up bringing partial relief.

In 2005, the city rezoned a 2-mile waterfront stretch from south of the Williamsburg Bridge to Newtown Creek at the northern border of Brooklyn for higher density housing. One conservative estimate puts the amount of new residential development to date at something on the order of 4,000 new units. However there is potentially lots of development to come from the remaining towers of existing developments (like Northside Piers), or the eye-popping redevelopment of the Domino Sugar Factory which will bring 2500 units and possibly a new middle or high school school. Farther north, a developer will soon break ground on a 5000 unit developmenton the Greenpoint waterfront which will include a school.